Google and Microsoft have been embroiled in an ugly and protracted war of words for some time, and the rift between the two companies widened last week when the search giant moved to block the newly revamped ‘official’ YouTube app for Windows Phone. Google had previously done the same thing with the original YouTube for Windows Phone app before later agreeing to work with Microsoft to fix it, only to turn around and come up with a whole list of new reasons as to why the app still isn’t acceptable.

Microsoft was pretty pissed off the first time around, but managed to bite its tongue. It agreed to work with Google to address its concerns over the app, which included ads not being displayed correctly and various other complaints. However, when Google immediately blocked the app on its relaunch, Microsoft decided to go public with its anger, with Corporate Vice President & Deputy General Counsel David Howard lashing out at the search engine in a furious blog post called “The Limits of Google’s Openness“.

“This week, after we addressed each of Google’s points, we re-launched the app, only to have Google technically block it. We know that this has been frustrating, to say the least, for our customers. We have always had one goal: to provide our users a YouTube experience on Windows Phone that’s on par with the YouTube experience available to Android and iPhone users. Google’s objections to our app are not only inconsistent with Google’s own commitment of openness, but also involve requirements for a Windows Phone app that it doesn’t impose on its own platform or Apple’s (both of which use Google as the default search engine, of course).”

As expected, Microsoft’s statement provoked a stern response from Google justifying its decision to block YouTube for Windows Phone. The search company stated that Microsoft had failed to address all of Google’s previous concerns:

“We’ve been working with Microsoft to build a fully featured YouTube for Windows Phone app, based on HTML5. Unfortunately, Microsoft has not made the browser upgrades necessary to enable a fully-featured YouTube experience, and has instead re-released a YouTube app that violates our Terms of Service. It has been disabled.”

Petty, Bullying Antics – Which Is Worse?

Writing for The Verge, Tom Warren depicts how the bitter row boils down to Google’s insistence on Microsoft using HTML 5 to build its YouTube app, despite the fact that on iOS and Android, the YouTube app is written in native coding for those operating systems. Microsoft claims that this is unfair, and insists that it’s not possible to create a full-feaured YouTube app for Windows Phone in HTML 5.

However, as is often the case, there is more to this feud than meets the eye. The row over YouTube is in fact just the latest in a series of scuffles between Google and Microsoft which dates back to the latter’s launch of its “Scroogled” propaganda campaign. Scroogled originally started out with the goal of enticing netizens away from using Google’s search engine by pointing out how its results were often biased towards its own services, and by trying to show how Bing’s search results were superior. If it had stuck to that alone, Google probably wouldn’t have been so aggressive in its response, but at the beginning of the year Microsoft stepped things up by attacking Gmail and its propensity to ‘read’ your emails to deliver targeted ads as you compose messages. More recently, Microsoft criticized Gmail for placing ads directly in your inbox – an accusation that’s true enough, but also one that looks a bit thin considering the recent Ed Snowden leaks.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, it would appear that the Windows maker is cooperating with the NSA even more closely than Google is, which makes its “Your privacy is our priority” slogan and its attacks on Google look pretty weak.

Undeterred, Microsoft has also established a number of front organizations to attack Google in the US and Europe, including the anti-Google lobby Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace, and the FairSearch organization that’s been prominent in landing Google in trouble with European privacy authorities.

Microsoft’s antics might seem kind of petty, but in this latest development it seems that Google may come out of it looking worse. The whole Scroogled campaign has been rather tongue-in-cheek, sometimes even downright amusing, but Google’s responses can be seen as downright nasty and bullying in comparison – take for example, its recent decision to stop supporting the ActiveSync protocol Microsoft uses for its emails, calendars and contacts, thus blocking Windows Phone users from services like Gmail.

Now, with Google blocking the YouTube app once again, one can’t help but think its being slightly unfair, using its unparalleled market power to dissuade people from using Windows Phone.